


Living the Dream

by What_we_are



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Domestic Bliss, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Series, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-10
Updated: 2014-10-10
Packaged: 2018-02-20 13:26:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2430446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/What_we_are/pseuds/What_we_are
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by "build ourselves a fire" by deerenolds. Or maybe it's a sequel. Remix?</p><p>Badger doesn't love college. Skinny Pete makes a shrine for everybody they've lost. Their cat enjoys watching Star Trek TNG.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Living the Dream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [deereynolds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deereynolds/gifts).



>   
> “You’re way too sensitive about your zone, bro.” Badger to Skinny Pete in "Thirty-Eight Snub"

  


Badger drove home from class a little pissy. Graphic design school was supposed to be about art, but every time he mentioned a totally well known TV or video game character, the instructor had no idea what he was talking about. 

Seeing Pete's Thunderbird out front of their house cheered him up a little. 

He opened the front door and called out, “Yo, Skinny. I’m back. You bring home any old burgers today?”

From the other room Pete called back, “No. And I told you they’re not _old_. They’re just like a few minutes too old to serve. They’re still good.”

His Siamese cat came up to greet him. Badger took off his backpack and picked her up. He asked the cat, “What’s his deal? I said I liked the burgers.” The cat purred and head butted his hand. “Yeah, you like that. Good kitty. You keep Skinny out of trouble today? You swish your tail like a metronome, so he could play music for you?”

His unnamed cat had put on weight since they moved to the new house. There were two people now, which doubled her chances that someone would remember to feed her. Plus they didn't do crystal, or leave for days at a time. Sometimes the boys smoked pot and fed her Taco Bell meat or soft serve ice cream. They had tried to blow pot smoke in her face once, a long time ago, but she ran out of the room. In the new house, she liked to sit on top of the upright piano while they were smoking a bowl. She’d come back to snuggle between them on the couch, when they weren't. They figured out that her favorite thing in the world was to watch was the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episodes that had Data’s cat in them. When they got too baked to effectively play video games, they'd put it on and watch the cat stare at Spot all wide-eyed and intense. 

Badger set the cat down on their broken Slurpee machine, and went to see what Pete was doing.

There was bunch of shit arranged on his dresser. 

“What’s all this stuff?” Badger asked.

Skinny Pete spit out, “This is technically my room. You can't just come up in here and criticize.” He felt bad when he saw Badger’s hurt look. “Shit. Come ‘ere.” He hugged Badger hard. “Sorry man. I just didn't want you to laugh at my memorial thing. It’s not done. And it’s like . . . emotional.”

Badger kept one arm around Pete, while the looked at the decorations on top of the dresser. There were Catholic candles and lots of photographs in front of the stuff that’d always been there: a coin jar, an ashtray Pete made, a wooden box Jesse made, and a glass bong.

Badger held Pete’s shirt sleeve, while he stepped forward to inspect everything. Some of the pictures were from when Jesse, Combo, and Skinny Pete all went to the strip club without him. There was a newspaper picture of Jesse, and the obituaries for Combo, Heisenberg, and Jesse’s old girlfriend Andrea. They didn't know her that well, but she was the nicest person they knew, definitely the nicest person they ever met at a NA meeting. It was so fucked up. And they knew it had to have something to do with Heisenberg and Jesse. Once everything shook out, they could see that Jesse had done them a favor by ditching them.

Skinny squeezed his hand. “So what do you think? I was thinking I just want to have it up for a while, you know, pay my respects or whatever. The therapist thought it was a good idea. Closure, and all.” Badger kept looking at the pictures without saying anything, so Pete went on, “I know Jesse might still be out there. I put his picture there cause I miss him. And, I mean, we gotta give Heisenberg a shout out - he paid for all this.”

“Yeah. He was always cool to us.”

“I was thinking of drawing a hat and glasses on him, like how he really looked. You don’t think that’d be disrespectful, do you?”

“No. That’d be cool.” Badger picked up a picture of Jesse and a stripper. “He was really happy huh?”

“Yeah. Drunk as fuck. But yeah, he was happy.”

“I was thinking that if he did come back, he could use the downstairs bed. I could put a plant down there to make it look good.”

“Yeah.” Skinny started to cry.

Badger pulled him into another hug. He never in his life thought him and Skinny Pete would hug this much. It was more of a surprise than the other thing.

Skinny Pete didn't smell like deep fat fryers. He smelled like Axe body wash. Badger supposed that was what he smelled like too. 

Skinny broke away from the hug and scratched his head under his hat. “He was our boy, from way back, and we were smoking his product, while he was like . . .”

“We thought Heisenberg was cooking it. Everybody did. As far as we knew, Jesse’d left town. There’s no way we could have known what they were doing to him.”

Pete leaned against the door frame and put both his hands in the pockets of his sweatshirt. “I talked to the therapist about this memorial thing last week, but I didn't feel like it till today. I saw a yard with one of those dog chain things, a dog run. At first, I felt bad for the dog cause the grass was all dead where he was always stepping. Then I remembered those pictures from the news. It made my stomach hurt. Six months, here, in ABQ. In our own town- that was going on. It’s like, I’m thankful we were never any good at cooking. He was the best. He got better than Heisenberg. He shoulda made a billion dollars and been home free.”

“It sucks.”

“It makes me glad I’m not that good at anything.”

“You’re good at a lot of things.”

“But you know what I mean.”

Badger knew exactly what he meant. They were lucky to be nobodies. 

*


End file.
